A tag is metadata associated with an item, such as a digital image or bookmark. The tag is typically a character string, or keyword. Tags for an item may be generated in any number of ways. One or more users may enter the tag using a keyboard or similar mechanism or may select the tag from a list. For example, on an image sharing website, multiple users may enter tags that they may believe are descriptive of a particular image. Alternatively, tag(s) may be preset by an entity. For example, an image or bookmark might be provided with a name, or tag, by the user who captured the image or the entity maintaining the website. In some instances, an item may have a number of tags entered by the same or different users.
Tags may be used in organizing and/or utilizing the items to which the tags correspond. In a collection of digital images, for example, each image may have one or more tags. These tags may be provided by users and may be descriptive of the image. When a user wishes to view certain images, they enter keywords into the search engine. The keywords are those the user believes would be associated with an image. The search engine searches an archive of tags for matches to the keywords entered by the user. If any matches are found, the images corresponding to the tags are provided to the user.
Although tags are useful, there are drawbacks. Over time, each item may be associated with a large number of tags. Some of the tags are used only sporadically in organizing or utilizing the items. As a result, the tags or the items themselves may become stale. For a large collection of items, many of which may have a large number of seldom or unused tags, storage of stale information may be particularly undesirable. Some conventional mechanisms for managing information remove items, such as bookmarks, which have expired. However, better management of the tags and items is still desired. In addition, there is often no requirement that a tag entered by a user actually be descriptive of the item. For example, in a collection of images available to multiple users, the users are often unconstrained in their selection of a tag. Consequently, tags that are not descriptive or even misdescriptive of the item may be added. As a result, organization of or searches for items using such a tag may provide unexpected or ineffective results. As a result, improved management of items and the tags corresponding to the items is still desired.